# Irving Kristol The self-described "godfather of neoconservatism" — the man who more than anyone else engineered the migration of disillusioned left-wing intellectuals into the Republican coalition, built the institutional infrastructure to house them, and supplied the ideological vocabulary that justified American power projection abroad and market orthodoxy at home. Irving Kristol (1920-2009) was a Brooklyn-born, City College-educated intellectual who began as a Trotskyist, became an anti-Communist liberal, and ended as the founding architect of the neoconservative movement that reshaped the Republican Party from [[Ronald Reagan]] through [[George W. Bush]]. His most famous formulation: a neoconservative is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality." The line is clever. It's also a self-serving myth — what actually happened was that a generation of Cold War intellectuals decided the Democratic Party had moved too far left on Vietnam, welfare, and the counterculture, and Kristol built them a new political home funded by conservative foundations and corporate money. ## Background Born January 22, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of non-observant Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Kristol graduated from Boys High School in 1936 and earned his BA from the City College of New York (CCNY) in 1940, where he majored in history. At CCNY he was part of the "Alcove No. 1" circle of anti-Stalinist leftists — the famous political lunchroom where Trotskyists debated Stalinists and a generation of future neoconservatives cut their intellectual teeth. Fellow alcove members included Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, and others who would later follow Kristol's trajectory rightward. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II as an infantryman in Europe. After the war, he married the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb. Their son, Bill Kristol, would co-found the [[Project for the New American Century]] and edit *[[The Weekly Standard]]* — the next-generation neoconservative flagship. ## The Magazine Empire Kristol's genius was editorial — he understood that controlling magazines meant controlling ideas, and controlling ideas meant controlling policy. His publication record is a map of the neoconservative movement's development: **Commentary (1947-1952)** — Kristol served as managing editor under Elliot Cohen at this magazine published by the American Jewish Committee. Commentary became the house organ of the "New York Intellectuals" who were moving from Marxism toward anti-Communist liberalism. **Encounter (1953-1958)** — Co-founded with the poet Stephen Spender, this British-American literary-political journal was later revealed to have been covertly funded by the CIA through the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Kristol has maintained he did not know about the CIA funding, though this claim is disputed. **[[The Public Interest]] (1965-2005)** — Co-founded with Daniel Bell (later co-edited with Nathan Glazer), this was the journal that defined neoconservatism as a domestic policy orientation. Initially presenting itself as a nonideological social science journal, *The Public Interest* systematically demolished liberal assumptions about the effectiveness of [[Great Society programs]], welfare policy, and government regulation. The journal's consistent message: well-intentioned government programs produce perverse, unintended consequences — a conclusion that conveniently aligned with corporate opposition to regulation. **The National Interest (1985-2002)** — Founded by Kristol to extend the neoconservative project into foreign policy, this journal provided the intellectual framework for post-Cold War American hegemony. ## The Institutional Builder Kristol's most consequential work was not his own writing but the **infrastructure he built to fund, house, and amplify conservative ideas**. He was the matchmaker between right-wing money and right-wing intellectuals — the man who convinced corporate foundations and wealthy donors that funding think tanks and academic programs was more politically effective than funding candidates directly. Key institutional connections: - **[[American Enterprise Institute]]** — Kristol joined AEI as the [[John M. Olin]] Distinguished Fellow in 1988 after resigning from NYU. Under his influence, AEI became the institutional center of neoconservative scholarship. He remained senior fellow until his death. - **[[John M. Olin Foundation]]** — Kristol was instrumental in directing Olin Foundation money toward conservative academic programs and think tanks, helping create a network of endowed chairs and research centers at major universities. - **[[Bradley Foundation]]** — Another major funder that Kristol helped connect to the neoconservative project. - **[[Sarah Scaife Foundation]]** — [[Richard Mellon Scaife]]'s foundation funded many Kristol-connected enterprises. - **[[Manhattan Institute]]** — Co-founded by Kristol and Antony Fisher in 1978 to promote free-market ideas in urban policy. The Institute later launched [[Charles Murray]]'s career with *[[Losing Ground]]*, the book that intellectualized welfare reform. This network — Olin money funding AEI scholars who published in Kristol's journals and spoke at Heritage conferences — was the prototype for the modern conservative intellectual-industrial complex. The [[Koch Network]] and [[Leonard Leo]]'s dark money architecture are descendants of the model Kristol pioneered. ## The Ideological Journey Kristol's rightward migration followed a pattern that became the template for neoconservatism as a whole: **1930s-1940s: Trotskyist left** — Kristol absorbed the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism: that the Soviet Union had betrayed the revolution. He carried forward the Trotskyist habits of mind — organizational discipline, factional combat, certainty of one's own correctness — even as he abandoned the ideology. **1950s: Anti-Communist liberalism** — The Cold War turned Kristol into a militant anti-Communist. He was willing to accept [[McCarthyism]]'s excesses as a price of anti-Communist vigilance, writing that he preferred "the 'banality' of McCarthyism" to the "subtlety" of Communist subversion. **1960s-1970s: The break with the left** — The [[Vietnam War]], the counterculture, the Black Power movement, and the perceived failures of [[New Deal]] liberalism's Great Society programs drove Kristol and his circle out of the Democratic coalition. They concluded that the American left had been captured by anti-American radicalism and naively utopian social engineering. **1980s-2000s: Republican intellectual** — By the Reagan era, Kristol was a fully committed Republican intellectual, providing policy justification for supply-side economics, deregulation, and American military assertiveness. He endorsed a version of capitalism tempered by traditional values — distinguishing neoconservatism from pure libertarianism by insisting that markets needed moral and cultural foundations. ## The "Two Cheers" Philosophy Kristol's most famous book was *Two Cheers for Capitalism* (1978) — the title captures his position precisely. He supported capitalism but not the libertarian celebration of it. Markets needed the moral framework that religion and traditional culture provided. Without that framework, capitalism would dissolve the social bonds it depended on. This "two cheers" stance defined neoconservatism's uneasy relationship with both the libertarian right (too indifferent to culture) and the religious right (too suspicious of markets). Kristol was the broker between them — arguing that free markets and traditional values were complementary, not contradictory. ## Legacy Irving Kristol's lasting contribution is the **institutional model** — the demonstration that ideas, properly funded and strategically placed, could reshape politics more effectively than campaign contributions or grassroots organizing. He proved that a relatively small number of intellectuals, backed by a relatively small number of foundations, could shift the entire terms of American political debate. The irony: the movement Kristol built has been largely overtaken by the populist nationalism of the Trump era, which rejects both the foreign policy interventionism and the free-market economics that defined neoconservatism. Bill Kristol, Irving's son, became one of Trump's most vocal Republican critics — a man without a party, defending his father's ideology against the coalition his father's infrastructure helped create. ## See Also - [[Neoconservatism]] — The ideology he built - [[Leo Strauss]] — The philosopher who influenced his framework - [[American Enterprise Institute]] — His institutional home - [[Project for the New American Century]] — His son's foreign policy vehicle - [[John M. Olin Foundation]] — Key funder he directed - [[Bradley Foundation]] — Major neoconservative infrastructure funder - [[Manhattan Institute]] — Think tank he co-founded - [[Heritage Foundation]] — Complementary institution in the network - [[Paul Wolfowitz]] — Straussian neocon in government - [[Dark Money]] — The funding model he pioneered - [[Ronald Reagan]] — The president his movement enabled